Search for the Net Terminal Gene
by Beleriand
Summary: Continuing the alternate story of Killy and the search for the net terminal gene. Old account lost.
1. Chapter 1

Author's note:

I lost the email to the original account drunkpencil, so I will be continuing the story on this one.

 _Somewhere deep in the Megacity, hidden from most prying eyes._

Killy laid the female clone down on the cold metal floor. He cycled his optical sensors and scanned her medical condition while preparing the last remaining vita-shot he had found earlier. She was not in need of immediate medical attention, but he injected her with it anyway. She did not struggle when the needle pierced her skin. For now, she was safe. They were safe. He left her to search for a blanket and maybe some food. Surely his storehouse had some.

The storehouse was well-equipped. It had its own power supply, multiple cameras and sensors, and an AI to control all the different systems. It had been over 10 years since he had last been here, but the AI reported that all systems were running optimally, ranging from water and nutrient-bar production, to air filtering and thermal regulation, and most importantly, the pseudo-autonomous algorithms crawling the nearby local networks for information about the net terminal gene. He paused for several minutes before giving the order to stop the search. His mission was completed. Completed?

Without warning, a burst of emotions and flashing images came over him, and he fell to his knees. For a brief moment he remembered something, some faint detail about his past, who he was. He saw himself dressed in a blue uniform, at least he thought it was him, though the face was blurred, somehow missing. In this memory he appeared to be talking to an older man, a human scientist by the looks of it. Oddly the words did not make sense to him, as if he was speaking in a language he did not know, or maybe no longer knew. The man looked worried, shifting his weight and twiddling his thumbs, before presenting asome paper document. He could not read it, but he felt it was important. An uneasy silence followed. Then they shook hands, and the scientist smiled oddly.

He came to his senses slowly, sprawled awkwardly on the floor. He had a terrible headache, but otherwise he felt fine. However, a quick system check revealed substantial memory corruption. "Are you ok?" A voice said from behind, startling him.

Killy turned around rapidly, gun raised and finger on the trigger. It was the clone. They stared at one another, his dark eyes meeting her striking green. "I took the liberty of finding some clothes," she said, breaking the silence, The clone was wearing an identical suit to Killy's, a black leathery suit that shaped to its host, equipped with numerous biological interfaces and life-support functions. She reached into one of her pockets, and Killy's trigger finger twitched briefly, but it was only a nutrient bar. He lowered the weapon, shaking his head. What am I doing? He thought.

While Killy struggled to debug his own memory banks, sitting in diagnostics mode, and pondering the strange memory he had relived, the clone grew in strength, and appetite. She was a quick learner, and before long she was using the facilities of the storeroom as if she had always lived there. After a few days the clone had reprogrammed the nutrient bar production procedures to make one that tasted better. At least she claimed it did. To Killy it was just a nutrient bar with slightly higher sugar content. They did not talk much to one another, but at least the tone was friendly. Nearly a week passed, and Killy gave up debugging. Whatever damage had been done to his mind appeared permanent. It was time to explain to her what she was, who he was, and what he needed her for.

"B-27, can you come over here?" Asked Killy. "I need to check something." She logged off the console and turned around in her swivel chair. Killy felt his gaze drawn towards her eyes again. They were just like the others, like B-001, the first clone. However that girl was dead now, her body lost to the uncaring metal of the Megacity. "I need to perform some medical tests on you," he continued. She obeyed and the two went into the medical room. It was the smallest interior room in the storeroom, filled with large diagnostic instruments that Killy had hauled from different parts of the Megacity and modified long ago. He was not much of a scientist, but he had access to extensive data on the how-to's, and more importantly, he had been around for quite some time. The various instruments were mainly for treating his own unique physiology, but could be used for more general purposes too. Killy had once cured several members of a tribe of humans here who suffered from a flesh-eating virus. They turned on him after, and tried to take the storeroom for themself. He was forced to terminate them. However, for this particular job, he had prepared for many, many years.

He hooked the clone up to the machine, and this time, when the needles pierced her skin, she complained audibly. "Ouch," She yelped, "that hurts!". Killy ignored her. A few minutes went by and the setup was complete. The data began flowing across the screens, and Killy interpreted the readings. The Net Terminal Gene was there, intact, unmutated, but dormant. In this state it was unusable, and he would not be able to use her as a bridge to access the Net. Not that he had found such an access point anyway. He knew they would be heavily guarded, however, so if activating the gene turned out to be a lengthy procedure the task ahead would prove difficult. Also, there appeared to be some impurities in her bio-readings as well, perhaps those were responsible for her apparent memory loss, childlike naivety, and accelerated learning. Was her biological status stable enough to survive activating the gene? Would it cause her pain, would she die? The clone studied Killy's face. Unknown to himself, Killy was frowning. It was the first time she had seen an emotion in him. "Are you ok?" She asked him carefully.


	2. Chapter 2

_After examining the clone in the storeroom/hideout._

Killy responded uneasily. "I am not in perfect condition," he said. The clone waited for him to explain, but after nearly a minute of full silence, let it go. She then sat upright on the medical table, her back to him. Killy blinked. "You may return to your usual activities," he said, "I will be back in a few hours." The clone turned around, facing him. "You are going away?" She asked weakly, her eyes filled with inscurity. Killy did not answer.

Some few kilometers away from his base, in a claustrophobically sized corridor, Killy knocked on a dusty metal wall. On the surface, there was nothing remarkable about this wall, seemingly blending in with the other millions- billions even, of the other metall walls forming the skeleton of the Megacity. However, the knocking sound of the wall was not that of flesh meeting metal. Nodding ever so slightly to himself, Killy took a step back, and kicked this particular wall. The metal gave away like paper, bending inwards, and dragging with it unseen silver threads which were partially glued along the corridor wall. The sliding motion of the threads were like snakes shifting in grass, yet it ripped and teared fiercely across the dusted metal, with streams of dust particles pursuing the threads as they retreated into the now caved in section of the corridor.

Inside was utter darkness. Cycling his optical sensors casually, Killy's eyes were eventually met with a cold, pale light. The projected geometry of the room inside was strange to behold at the current range of wavelengths Killy was scanning. For a moment, he felt as if a thousand tiny needles pricked his skin, his biosuit warning him that the radiation coming from the room was near unsafe levels. Killy cleared his throat. "Voice", He said, waiting.

From inside the room came a tortured, electronic reply. "Killy, you have returned." It said, voice glitching. "I require some information," Killy said. Then something shifted in the room, and he had to blink several times as the geometry of the room seemed to warp like two spirals sliding through each other. The imaginary needles pricked his skin again too, meaning the radiation levels were fluxuating. "You know the price I pay," the voice growled, "for helping your kind." Killy shook his head. "I am not of any kind," he stated, "I am simply me. At least..." Uncertainty crawled through Killy's mind. The memory corruption may have changed his own definition of himself. The voice croaked hoarsely. "Tell me, then", it demanded sourly, seemingly unaware of Killy's own thoughts.

He explained to the voice, or rather, Maya, which was its real name, but better left unspoken, the visions he had seen while in his hideout. Killy told the voice that his memory was degrading, somehow, but left out the fact that he had located someone with the Net Terminal Gene. That did not seem to matter though. Someone how it knew. "There is only two explanations for your condition," Maya concluded, "either you are finally kicking the bucket, after centuries of pacing up and down these metal corridors, or you have found what you are looking for, and your dormant memory banks are re-assembling themselves, preparing to tell you the next step of the plan." Killy blinked, surprised that Maya had figured it out. "How do you know this?" He asked. The room's geometry shifted again, but this time the radiation levels dropped nearly to zero. "Because I was there," the voice finally said, "when you -". Abruptly, bursts of streaking plasma shot out from inside the room, singing Killy's hair as he ducked to avoid it. The plasma covered the walls of the corridor like a sticky fluid, burning it, ionizing it, and the metal foamed as black bubbles rose. The voice screamed in agony, then it was bitcrushed, like someone were making careful incisions on the copper wires of an electronic speaker .

Fortunately for Killy, the optical range he was viewing in protected him from being blinded by the bursts of plasma. However the hot gasses of the melting metal were as dangerous to him as any other living being. He peered into Maya's room one more time. It was just a simple cube now, nearly perfect in dimensions, but a with a pool of chunky wires and pale, blue liquid on the floor, with plasma rippling through it like ocean waves. Acting on instinct, Killy pulled up his gun, aimed at the room, and held his breath, bracing for impact. He pulled the trigger, and the cylindrical flare emitting from the gun seemingly erased all matter in front of him for several kilometers ahead, revealing endless lengths of cross-sectioned metal mazes beyond. Killy started forward, barely clearing the raging plasma liquid, and navigated the broken mazes ahead as best he could. He cycled his optical sensors back to visible light and in his mind pulled up a partial three-dimensional mapping of the current area he was in. Killy had not been in this section for quite for some time, but his memory, when not corrupted, was nearly picture perfect, at least for the sections he had been in before.

With impeccable timing, distant sirens started wailing. "Killbots," muttered Killy, "but how?" His hideout was far away from any areas of conflict he knew about, but he gussed they must have somehow been nearby and picked up on the spike in the thermal readings. Being so close on his tail, that meant he could not return to the storeroom without revealing its location. He thought about the clone. Clone? Killy fell to his knees, a blinding headache overtaking him. The clouding of his vision, the sirens, the sound of the killbots' spider legs maneuvering through the mazes, the pulse cannons spinning up, the melting metal, it all converged into a single point of light in his mind. Then the light flashed and died.

Killy opened his eyes and found himself staring at the clone. Her face was very close, her eyes teary. He was in the storeroom again. He wasn't holding a gun, but a needle. "Where are you going?", asked the clone softly. Killy tried to fall to his knees, but found that part had actually happened. He realized now he had just been reliving some other faint memory, a vision. However, this time he knew the vision well. It was the first time he had found a clone with a Net Terminal Gene. That one's genes had been dormant too. He had brought her to a different hideout. He had met the same problem. "I need to find a way to activate your gene," he said, gaining strength, remembering to breathe. "What gene?" She asked, curiously. "I saw some encrypted files on your computers here, but-" Killy interrupted her. "The Net Terminal Gene," he said bluntly. "Actually," he continued, "I think I know how to do it this time." This time? The clone pondered.


End file.
